Just when you think you've seen every kind of crime there is acted out on TV, The Black List comes up with a new twist. I just hope there's no murderous surgeon out there who watched that episode and thought "Oh, what a good idea!"

Originally Posted By: Rita

I've been wondering where Claire gets the great dresses she's been wearing. She showed up with absolutely nothing, but now she's the best-dressed woman in the clan.

Oh, Rita, you're such a romantic.

I'm a sucker for time travel stories, but I have to wonder if any 20th-century woman would truly choose to stay in 1743, no matter how hunky the men or how beautiful the scenery. Especially a woman with medical training: herbs and folk remedies can carry her only so far. Can she perform a root canal on herself? Could she remove her own inflamed appendix? Claire must know she'd be shortening her life span if she stays in the past.

Austin, TAR was moved to Friday because CBS wanted the Sunday spot for the new show Madam Secretary, to pair off with The Good Wife, back-to-back series about women in authority making decisions that affect more than just the family. I'd never make it as a TV programmer, because that schedule sounds like a bad idea to me; the two programs could easily dilute each other. But however that works out, it does look as if TAR's days are numbered.

Did anyone watch the first part of the adaptation of P.D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley on PBS? It plays as if Jane Austen did write it (except for the violent death, of course). I like Anna Maxwell Martin as Elizabeth -- plain jane, sensible, compassionate.

Creepy, yes, and eerily effective. That show's motto must be "No Holds Barred".

Pemberley -- I think the actor who plays Colonel Fitzwilliam (Tom Ward) should have been cast as Darcy. He has more presence than Matthew Rhys, more authority...and he's better-looking. (P&P stresses that Darcy is even more handsome than Bingley.) Jane Austen and P.D. James have a lot in common stylistically; they both wrote/write elaborate, carefully thought-out sentences, and they both have the same quiet, understated sense of humor. It's a good match.

This past week was winners' week on TV, not winning shows necessarily but winners of reality competitions. The title of Master Chef Junior went to a beautiful 11-year old boy named Logan Guleff. Those children were amazing...they all could cook things I'd never even heard of. One little girl was only eight. Eight years old and competing in a nationally televised cooking contest! What were you doing when you were eight years old? I was still learning how to read. But Ramsey said Logan already had his chef's style, and it was a well-deserved win.

Survivor was a little different this time. No repeats, all new players. No villains. No heroes. Just a group of fairly well-matched players going through the usual maneuvering to reach Final Council, and the smartest player won, Natalie Anderson. No one ever voted against her in Tribal. Natalie and her twin sister Nadiya had earlier participated in TAR, and ironically Nadiya was the first one voted off in Survivor. Jeff Probst said they bookended the game. Another well-deserved win.

And so was La Tasha McCutcheon's win in Hell's Kitchen. Her team never nominated her for elimination, but I think the reason she won was that she was the most mature of the competitors. The rest were the usual collection of braggarts and dreamers. Ramsey made a good choice.

Last, but never least, TAR, which was won by a dark horse team. Food scientists Amy DeTong and Maya Warren never won a leg of the race, and they came in last in the penultimate leg, which was a non-elimination leg. So they started the final leg in last place, after three other teams. It was the memory test that won it for them. Amy sailed through it, getting all the answers right on the first try, something the others couldn't do. That gave them a big enough lead to let them cross the finish line first. They didn't run as good a race as the teams they beat, but they came through when it counted most. TAR showed a brief preview of the next race, so the show isn't done yet.

Child chef Logan is a wonder. For his final entrée, he cooked something he'd never tried before because he thought it would impress the judges -- and he was right. A baked branzino with a salt crust so thick there was no way to test the fish for doneness (or overdoneness). And he nailed it. Right after Ramsay announced Logan as the winner, he picked the kid up and hugged him. That's how delighted he was to find someone so special so young.